Truth: A Tepid, Preachy Take on the Rathergate Scandal

It was perhaps inevitable that a narrative feature about the 2004 Killian documents scandal (a.k.a., “Rathergate”) at CBS would eventually find its way to theaters. What’s surprising is that Truth, a film dramatizing that notorious modern collision between journalism, politics, and corporate media—a film starring Cate Blanchett and Robert Redford, no less—could be so tepid and ungainly. Filmmaker James Vanderbilt previously penned the screenplay to the superb Zodiac, and for his directorial debut he’s plainly seeking to emulate Michael Mann’s masterpiece The Insider. There’s little of either of those great films’ DNA in Truth, however, which mostly just fumbles about with unfocused earnestness.

Part of the film’s problem is its determination to portray 60 Minutes producer Mary Mapes (Blanchett), anchor Dan Rather (Redford), and the rest of the CBS investigative team as flawed martyrs who did the right thing for the wrong reasons. Whether or not this wobbly, blame-shifting assertion is reasonable is almost beside the point: The film doesn’t present much to support it, other than giving its protagonists a few didactic, unearned monologues, and positing whopping Daddy Issues as the Grand Unified Theory for all of Mapes’ actions.

It didn’t have to be that way. The Insider turned another infamous 60 Minutes segment into cinematic gold, but Vanderbilt seems to have gleaned the wrong lessons from Mann’s 1999 feature. Instead weaving a moody, tangled tale of journalism in crisis, he just apes isolated stylistic details, such as Lisa Gerrard-esque ululations on the soundtrack. Add in gawky pacing and the result is a dispiritingly mediocre execution of a questionable exercise in ex post facto reputation burnishing. Even a pointedly anti-Bush documentary about the Rathergate scandal would be preferable to Truth’s colorless fiction; at least the former would have a little righteous fire in it belly.

Andrew Wyatt is a lifelong St. Louis native and a freelance writer on film art. Read his essays on classic, cult, and contemporary cinema at gatewaycinephile.com and follow along with his film addiction at letterboxd.com/awyatt76/.